Billiards & Pool
The heart of the site: a master directory of cue makers, table builders, supply shops, players and media from pool's golden directory era.
Browse the billiard index →Jack's Free Lunch
A hand-crafted library of links to the things that interest Jack Stein — billiards and pool, OS/2 and REXX, woodworking, and FidoNet — assembled one page at a time in the classic hand-built style of the early web, and preserved here for players, collectors and retro-computing fans.
The site's original welcome banner, drawn by hand circa 2001.
Four topics, one workbench
Browse the full site guide →OS/2 & REXX
Curated utilities for IBM's legendary operating system — Hobbes archive picks, command-line tools and Jack's own GETSET.CMD REXX script.
See OS/2 files →Woodworking
More than a hundred hand-picked links to tool makers, lumber suppliers, plan sources and workshops that Jack trusted in his own cabinet shop.
Enter the wood shop →FidoNet & BBS
Links to the dial-up world's beloved network — FidoNet organizations, echomail resources and boards you could reach by telnet.
Dial into FidoNet →Featured from the notebook
All pool articles →The Physics of Pool
Lou Figueroa's much-loved RSB essay: equations don't make a great player — table time does.
Easy Misses
Missing the easy ones is the game quietly telling you what to work on. Listen closely.
The Short Game
Tony Mathews borrows a page from golf: position play — not shot making — wins tournaments.
Pool School
Mark Ottoson's detailed diary of a 14-hour course with a BCA certified instructor.
From Jack's photo album
Welcome page →
Recommended resources
Jack's curated picks →Richard Mille replicas
A hand-picked source Jack added for anyone chasing a faithful copy of the signature tonneau — the UMI range and the RM 67-02 are his two favourites, each checked and worth a look.
Read his recommended resources →About this site
Read the full story →Jack's Free Lunch began in the late 1990s as Jack Stein's personal bookmark collection — hand-coded frames, tiled backgrounds and all. Jack ran an OS/2 machine, shot pool, built furniture in his wood shop, and could dial into FidoNet like the best of them. The site was hand-crafted from 1996 into the 2000s and has been carefully restored from the Internet Archive so every original page keeps its address. Questions or memories to share? Write to webmaster@jbstein.com.
Questions, answered
All frequently asked questions →Are the external links still good?
They are preserved exactly as Jack wrote them around 2001–2003. Some destinations still thrive; others are part of web history now. Each directory carries a note about this.
Can I still download the OS/2 files?
Most links point to the Hobbes archive at NMSU, which is still online. One file — Jack's own GETSET.CMD — was lost when its local copy went offline.
May I quote the articles?
The essays by Lou Figueroa, Tony Mathews, Mark Ottoson and friends were first posted to Rec.Sport.Billiard; they are republished here as the author discussions they were.